Chapter 4
Agile Requires Different Project Leadership

Every project needs some sort of project management. Not every project, especially agile projects, needs a project manager. In fact, if you have a cross-functional feature team and everyone in the organization has the agile mindset, you might not need any project leadership. However, I have yet to see this circumstance in organizations that are new to agile approaches.

When you first start using an agile approach, you may need a servant leader in the form of an agile project manager or a coach to help the team understand the process it needs. That servant leader might need to help the team recognize what to change about the team’s process and how the team could change. You might need that person to protect the team from what I call “management mayhem” in ​Avoid Management Mayhem​. Agile project managers facilitate the team’s process and remove impediments that prevent the team from delivering finished value.

You might be accustomed to more of a hierarchy in your project: the project manager took responsibility for the team’s work and the team’s process. Everyone reported to the project manager. Conversely, in agile approaches, team members report to each other. The team commits to and takes responsibility for its work and its process. That changes the kind of leadership a team needs.

Agile teams do not require anyone to control them. Agile teams don’t need any hierarchy to work or to solve problems. In fact, hierarchy and control often prevent team members from feeling safe and collaborating, which many teams depend on for learning and experimenting. Agile teams require servant leadership—a different kind of project management.

Agile project-management activities facilitate the team’s ability to work and to deliver value. In this chapter, I’ll discuss what servant leaders are, the servant leaders you need, and the servant leaders you might consider for your team.